This in-depth account of the rise and decline of the Citizens' Councils of America details the organization's role in the massive resistance to school desegregation in the South following the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision. Included are a new preface and updated bibliography. "A tour de force of research and narration. . . in highly readable style. [McMillen] . . . seems to have read everything the historical record has to offer on the subject and to have known exactly what to make of it. . . Himself squarely on the side of the future, he is sensitive to the anguish that prompted the hysteria of the misguided racist. . . . By any test, a masterful study." -- Journal of Southern History "Takes seriously the people who made the movement, when ridicule and caricature would have been an easier analytical technique. Solidly researched and well written. . . an intriguing story." -- Augustus M. Burns, Social Studies

In Resisting Equality Stephanie R. Rolph examines the history of the Citizens’ Council, an organization committed to coordinating opposition to desegregation and black voting rights. In the first comprehensive study of this racist group, Rolph follows the Citizens’ Council from its establishment in the Mississippi Delta, through its expansion into other areas of the country and its success in incorporating elements of its agenda into national politics, to its formal dissolution in 1989. Founded in 1954, two months after the Brown v. Board of Education decision by the U.S. Supreme Court, the Council spread rapidly in its home state of Mississippi. Initially, the organization relied on local chapters to monitor signs of black activism and take action to suppress that activism through economic and sometimes violent means. As the decade came to a close, however, the Council’s influence expanded into Mississippi’s political institutions, silencing white moderates and facilitating a wave of terror that severely obstructed black Mississippians’ participation in the civil rights movement. As the Citizens’ Council reached the peak of its power in Mississippi, its ambitions extended beyond the South. Alliances with like-minded organizations across the country supplemented waning influence at home, and the Council movement found itself in league with the earliest sparks of conservative ascension, cultivating consistent messages of grievance against minority groups and urging the necessity of white unity. Much more than a local arm of white terror, the Council’s work intersected with anticommunism, conservative ideology, grassroots activism, and Radical Right organizations that facilitated its journey from the margins into mainstream politics. Perhaps most crucially, Rolph examines the extent to which the organization survived the successes of the civil rights movement and found continued relevance even after the Council’s campaign to preserve state-sanctioned forms of white supremacy ended in defeat. Using the Council’s own materials, papers from its political allies, oral histories, and newspaper accounts, Resisting Equality illuminates the motives and mechanisms of this destructive group.

This is a story of hope, but also of peril. It began when our nation’s polarized political class started conscripting everyday citizens into its culture war. From their commanding heights in political parties, media, academia, and government, these partisans have attacked one another for years, but increasingly they’ve convinced everyday Americans to join the fray. Why should we feel such animosity toward our fellow citizens, our neighbors, even our own kin? Because we’ve fallen for the false narrative, eagerly promoted by pundits on the Left and the Right, that citizens who happen to vote Democrat or Republican are enthusiastic supporters of Team Blue or Team Red. Aside from a minority of party activists and partisans, however, most voters are simply trying to choose the lesser of two evils. The real threat to our union isn’t Red vs. Blue America, it’s the quiet collusion within our nation’s political class to take away that most American of freedoms: our right to self-governance. Even as partisans work overtime to divide Americans against one another, they’ve erected a system under which we ordinary citizens don’t have a voice in the decisions that affect our lives. From foreign wars to how local libraries are run, authority no longer resides with We the People, but amongst unaccountable officials. The political class has stolen our birthright and set us at one another’s throats. This is the story of how that happened and what we can do about it. America stands at a precipice, but there’s still time to reclaim authority over our lives and communities.

There are serious dangers lurking behind the government's $30 billion electronic health record (EHR) experiment. This omnipresent technology turns doctors into data clerks and shifts attention from patients to paperwork-while health plans, government agencies, and the health data industry profit. Patients who think the HIPAA ''privacy'' rule protects the confidentiality of their medical information will be shocked to discover it makes their medical records an open book. Inside this book, discover: - how Congress forced doctors to install surveillance in the exam room - hard facts from over 125 studies and reports about the impact of EHRs on medical care, costs, patient safety, and more - how patient treatment decisions are controlled (and tracked) by the EHR - what specific steps back to freedom, privacy, and patient safety are available, and why we must act now.

Discusses racial relations in Dallas during the 1950s and 1960s and describes the struggles of the black community to gain power

The 1960s were a transformative era for American politics, but much is still unknown about the growth of conservatism during the period when it was radically reshaped and became the national political force that it is today. In their efforts to chronicle the national politicians and organizations that led the movement, previous histories have often neglected local perspectives, the role of religion, transnational exchange, and other aspects that help to explain conservatism's enduring influence in American politics. Taken together, the contributions gathered here offer a cutting-edge synthesis that incorporates these overlooked developments and provides new insights into the way that the 1960s shaped the trajectory of postwar conservatism.